U. GLY: The least attractive college campuses in America

Some college campuses are idyllic little slices of heaven that seem soaked in perfect academic majesty. Others, not so much. These campuses are on the ugly side. A few are like flawed slices of hell.

Enjoy!

Prison or SUNY Purchase?

1. Purchase College, State University of New York

SUNY Purchase feels like a modern interpretation of a medieval fortress, or perhaps a repurposed maximum security prison. Naturally, several of its 1960s-era buildings were designed by famous architects.

The soul-crushing library at UMass Dartmouth

2. University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

Boston City Hall, built in 1968, is widely regarded as one of the ugliest buildings in the world. The mayor gasped in horror when plans were initially unveiled. Someone else shrieked, “What the hell is that?” If you like Boston City Hall, though, you can revel in a campus full of the same brutalist spectacles some 50 miles away at UMass Dartmouth. Not to be confused with Dartmouth College, of which President Dwight Eisenhower said in 1953, “This is what a college should look like.”

Cold, sterile SUNY Albany

3. University at Albany – State University of New York

Architecture critics have hailed the main campus at SUNY Albany as a formal masterpiece. If “formal” means a desolate, soulless morass of concrete, then that description is very apt.